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Best OBDII scan tool for the money and why?

I'd like to know which scan tool you guys use why & price. Also is there a certain one that should be used w/ OBDII turbo'd MKIV's? I need to get one and I'd like input from mthe MKIV community.

**On a side note, I just came back from AutoZone where in the past I'd rent a scan tool. Well, I was informed by the manager that due to a new law in CA, they no longer rent the tool to customers and furthermore no other auto parts store in CA. He said to his knowledge, the tool is no longer rented to cutomers because the dealers were upset that customers were resorting to a scan tool instead of the dealerships service thus they pushed this law into effect Can you guys believe that, thats f'n crazy!!**

Well are you trying to datalog? Or just read codes? I had a cheap ebay scanner that was less than $60 and it worked perfect. It would read codes for both check engine lights and hidden codes (like VSS for example). It would data log 'ok'. But it wasnt the fastest thing in the world. The more expensive scanners will datalog faster, if you want to log timing and RPM and that stuff. The scanner also worked on other OBD-2 cars as well.

Well are you trying to datalog? Or just read codes? I had a cheap ebay scanner that was less than $60 and it worked perfect. It would read codes for both check engine lights and hidden codes (like VSS for example). It would data log 'ok'. But it wasnt the fastest thing in the world. The more expensive scanners will datalog faster, if you want to log timing and RPM and that stuff. The scanner also worked on other OBD-2 cars as well.

Hope that helps.

So some scanner will not show all the codes. How do I find out if the scanner I plan on purchasing shows all the hiddem codes? I assume the lower budget scanners dont off this function? BTW whats VSS?

So some scanner will not show all the codes. How do I find out if the scanner I plan on purchasing shows all the hiddem codes? I assume the lower budget scanners dont off this function? BTW whats VSS?

VSS= vehicle speed sensor. A lot of times on Supras, the ecu will never get the VSS from the odometer and it will throw a code, but not illuminate the check engine light. There are several codes like this. I am assumming that most of the OBDII readers will read all codes, because the scanner I had was very cheap.

If you have a pc laptop forget about the others mentioned here, buy this, use scantool (freeware!) and you get a nice gui with real time data pulls from all the sensors from timing to error codes, intake temp, and voltage checks. You can reset error codes with a click. I was up and running with this thing within 10 minutes.

If you have a pc laptop forget about the others mentioned here, buy this, use scantool (freeware!) and you get a nice gui with real time data pulls from all the sensors from timing to error codes, intake temp, and voltage checks. You can reset error codes with a click. I was up and running with this thing within 10 minutes.